lovely

[sisyphusshrugged]

the color-blind party makes a play for the racial-division vote

A group financed by a major Republican contributor has begun running radio ads in about a dozen cities, many in battleground states, attacking Sen. John F. Kerry as "rich, white and wishy-washy" and mocking his wife for boasting of her African roots.

The D.C.-based group, People of Color United, has substantial financial backing from J. Patrick Rooney, the former chairman of Golden Rule Insurance Co. and the founder of a new firm, Medical Savings Insurance Co. Both firms specialize in medical savings accounts, created by Republican-backed 1996 legislation, and health savings accounts, which were created by President Bush's 2003 Medicare prescription drug legislation.

One of the radio ads addresses Kerry's failure to vote on a bill to extend unemployment benefits for 13 weeks: "It needed 60 votes to pass. Ninety-nine out of 100 senators voted -- Kerry did not! It lost by one vote! Maybe Kerry thought the more of us who are unemployed and hurting, the more likely we would vote Democrat."

Another ad attacks Teresa Heinz Kerry, who, at the Democratic convention last month cited her birth and upbringing in Mozambique and who has described herself as African American. In the radio commercial, the announcer says: "His wife says she's an African American. While technically true, I don't believe a white woman, raised in Africa, surrounded by servants, qualifies."

...

Rooney, who is white, said in an e-mail response to an inquiry from The Washington Post: "I support [the] group because the genuine word from the black community should be heard, not white folks saying for them."

Rooney also points out that the congregants at his church elected him to the board over the heads of "other black people"

Presumably the other black people weren't extremely rich.

Comments

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

Swift Boat Lesbian and Gay Negros Against Kerry.

[canonfire.livejournal.com]

Did you catch The Daily Show either last night or the night before with the clip from Fox News of Alan Keyes saying that Hillary Clinton moving to run for the Senate in NY was awful and the he would never do anything like that?

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, hysterical, wasn't it?

He's covering that now by saying he just can't bring himself to let a slaveowner type like Obama rule the land of Lincoln.

[lawgeekgurl.livejournal.com]

yeah, Rooney is a piece of work. I remember him giving huge amounts of money to the Repubs during the year that bill that virtually doubled his net profit (as Golden Rule was on the cutting edge of the medical savings account market) was passed. I really think they added that provision for Golden Rule's benefit specifically.